PARASHAT TERUMAH

THE MENORAH: DIVERSITY AND UNITY

By Rav Norman Meskin

Parashat Terumah contains a detailed description of the Keilim (vessels) used in the Mishkan (Tabernacle). One of the best known and most beautiful of these was the "Menorah" (lamp). According to several Midrashim, Moshe had trouble understanding how the Menorah should be fashioned, and Hashem had to show him a picture of the completed object.

But what was so difficult about making the Menorah? Basically, the Menorah consisted of a base from which there emerged a central branch that had the middle oil light on its top. Three more branches emerged on each side of this central branch, each decorated with almond cups, bulbs and a flower, with an oil light on top (for a total of seven). And if this was not complicated enough, the Torah requires that the Menorah be made “of one piece” – the entire Menorah must be fashioned from one solid block of gold. Apparently, Moshe could not imagine how such a complex work of art could be made from a single slab, and so Hashem had to show him the finished product so he would be able to build it.

Rabbi Yaakov Meir of Torah Mitzion suggests that, beyond the technical requirements, a more profound issue may be implied by Moshe's difficulty with the Menorah. Rabbi Meir explains that, by its very structure, the Menorah symbolizes two concepts that are seemingly contradictory: on one hand, multiplicity – symbolized by the number of branches on both sides of the central trunk, and on the other hand, unity – symbolized by the fact that the Menorah was to be fashioned whole, solid, of one piece.
Perhaps, what Moshe found difficult was the juxtaposition of multiplicity and unity. Hashem had to show him that the two could, indeed, co-exist in order for Moshe to understand the secret of joining opposites together. To clarify the matter further, the Torah adds another command: “And they shall give light towards its face” (Shemot 25:37) - meaning that the illumination of all the lights on the two sides is directed towards the central light.

It is through this commandment that the Torah reveals the secret of unity in multiplicity. If both sides rest on a common basis and aspire towards the same goal, then their differences, on the way to attaining that goal, create, not divisiveness, but rather harmonious multiplicity.

Thus, concludes Rabbi Meir, Chassidim and Mitnagdim, Sefardim and Ashkenazim, intellectual Torah sages and manual workers can live together with the understanding that each of them represents one brick in the great edifice that is Am Yisrael. As the Sages of Yavneh taught:
“I am a person and my neighbor is a person; I work in the city while he works in the fields; I get up in the morning to go to my work and he gets up in the morning to go to his work. Just as he is not haughty about my work, so I am not haughty about his work. And lest it be said that I do much while he does little, we are both the same: one may do more and the other less, so long as each directs his heart towards heaven.”